The good, the awesome and the wtf
Advertising. Like war, what is it good for? Ever wondered what the hell they are about most of the time? Are they selling a product, an idea or the agency? Promotion tool or ego trip? Arguably a little bit of all of that, and I reckon the best advertising through the ages did that to perfection. They broke moulds, sold stuff, invited thinking and looked damn good. Happy client, happy consumer, happy agency. But those, sadly, are not the norm. The vast majority of what you see out there today makes either the client, the consumer or the agency sad… Or all of them.
To understand that dynamic a bit better I’d recommend another good read I’ve acquired over Christmas. It’s this book called Mad Ave — Award Winning Advertising of the 20th Century, put together by The New York Art Director’s Club, Inc. Couldn’t find any reviews, but Amazon has some good things to say about it, see here.
It’s often the case with this sort of book to have page after page of really good ads without much context — but this is different. It gives a lot of background on how advertising evolved through the decades since the early 1900s, highlighting how artistic movements, mass industrialisation, financial crisis, wars and the like shaped marketing in general (not only advertising).
If anything, it looks like the whole thing is cyclical — we go from artsy to promotionally shouty ever so often in a pattern that follows closely the ups and downs of the economy. I know, no shit Sherlock.
Good book, if you can’t find it I’m happy to lend you mine. Get in touch.
Absolutely favourite Ad of the week — Travel Supermarket
See above — again, I couldn’t find the actual ad nowhere (and one more time I’ve failed to take a picture, even though I have a phone with a camera. It’s too cold to take the gloves off, i guess) but it’s basically that amazing picture of the dude in the most improbably shorts with the line ‘Search Wide. Travel Super.’ There’s so much right about it so I won’t go on, it’s just that everything clicks. Exaggerated pose (you are in charge), wide format showing broad horizon (the world is your oyster!), right time of the year (so fucking miserable out), solid promise (travel SUPER) that also works with the brand name. Love it.
WTF moment of the week — Campaign magazine’s ’10 things you need to know this week’
Campaign is basically the trade mag for advertising agencies, and it’s so bloody expensive at £3.70 a week that I only buy it very sporadically. Also, it’s not available at my local offie so there you go.
Anyway, last week I found myself drunk in SOHO and treated myself to one. Now, they run this regular featured called ’10 things you need to know this week’ and sure enough 9 of them were ‘good to know’. Like, Netflix expanding to 130 countries or the Daily Mirror considering a new title to rival The Independent’s ‘i’. What really made me ‘what the f’ out of it was item this...
The headline — ‘Sainsbury’s ad helps sales’. Really? In other news — ‘Pope still very much a catholic.’ I NEED to know ad helped sales? I should bloody expect so given the sheer amount of money they must pour into marketing. But the brilliant bit is the “trade well” in quotes. I know it’s because they’re quoting Sainsbury’s blurb, but it really looks like they’re air quoting it. so “trade well” could mean anything from ‘awesome’ to ‘by the skin of our teeth, thank God we still got a job…’
So yeah, thanks for the tip.